How potent do you think this is in our society? In Social Sciences Sorcery, Stanislav Andreski writes "Even such perely academic theories as the interpretations of human nature have profound practical consequences if diseminated widely enough. If we impress upon people that science has discovered that human beings are motivated only by the desire for material advantage, they will tend to live up to this expectation, and we shall have undermined their readiness to be moved by impersonal ideals. By propagating the opposite view we might succede in producing a large number of idealists, but might also help cynical exploiters to find easy victims. This specific issue, incidentally, is of immense actual importance, because it seems that the moral disorientation and fanatical nihilism which afflicts modern youth has been stimulated by the popular brands of sociology and psychology with their bias for overlooking the more inspiring achievements and focusing on the dismal average or even the subnormal. When, fraudulently basking in the glory of exact sciences, the psychologists refuse to study anything but the most mechanical forms of human behavior--often so mechanical that even rats have no chance to show their higher faculties--and then present their mostly trivial findings as the true picture of the human mind, they prompt people to regard themselves and others as automata, devoid of responsibility or worth, which can hardly remain without effect upon the tenor of social life."

How far are we to be manipulated by some forms of modern science, which suggests that we are only material? Is this no different than prophets of old? Are the majority of people just as duly influenced by what their scientist say as the prophet? Yet at least the prophet was governed by something that appears rational, organized, even if it was only their false projection of God. Instead the scientist is influenced by his or her results, save no other, which are increasingly having a negative effect upon society's values.

I am not specifically clear on what your exact question is, but I beleive it has something to do with whether or not we are capable of independent thought and free will, or act like automatons as you say, dictated entirely by environment.
Each of us has the capacity to think independantly, whether each of us exercises this fact is another issue. So onwards, what is independence?

Independence, or self reliance is the virtue by which you are self-supporting in the sense that you consume nothing that you haven't earned. In a market economy, everyone lives by trade. This does not make independence impracticable. The virtue of independence is to provide one's own means of subsistence. This means either producing it directly, or indirectly by creating something that someone else wants. Dependence, in this case, would mean relying on charity or favors from friends or family. Or worse, theft in the form of direct stealing from others, or indirect theft through benefits by government.

Independence is not only applicable to production, though. In fact, production isn't even the most important place where this virtue should be practiced. The most important is the independence of one's mind. Life requires man to act in order to achieve his values. This requires the proper use of judgment to not only pick the right values, but to understand the best way of achieving them. To substitute another's thoughts for yours makes it impossible to judge the accuracy of them. It makes it impossible to build off of them to achieve better understanding. This is the area where independence is most critical. To default on one's responsibilities is to default on one's life. The degree to which one abandons his intellectual independence is the degree to which he is helpless to act. The degree to which he cannot pursue his own life and values.

Another area where independence is useful is in social interaction. When dealing with friends or strangers, one needs to earn the benefit of the interaction. To default on this is to accept a reward without cause. Nothing is ever free, though. By accepting the unearned, a man loses his grasp of what it means to earn something. He loses his assurance of his own self-efficacy. Every independent act is a reaffirmation of one's ability to deal with reality. Every unearned gift is a blow to one's confidence.

So are the majority of humans practicing independence? Far from it.
Or how about free will?

Within the context of your mind, your consciousness is not a bunch of atoms held together in a particular way, but a perceptual and rational faculty that processes percepts into concepts from the lowest to the highest. This includes the creative process and problem solving. There is never something created from nothing -- there is no such thing as a divine inspiration; it is all a rearrangement of what was previously there.

Both within the context of consciousness and the context of interpersonal relations, people do have free will. This means that they do make choices, they act on those choices, and they are responsible for those choices.
Thanks for your time.

Oki, nothing more than self serving pap to serve the religious agenda of attempting to tear down science, which dares to at once claim that it is an authority on the workings of the world, and cannot confirm the existence of god. Mechanical functions are so widely studied by psychology because (and get ready for this) they are the easiest to test! Tell me, how would you construct an empirical test for free will? The focus on mechanical processes in the brain is a frequently examined limitation in the world of psychology, don't think you are the first one to notice. There are constant attempts at theories of how to expand more into the area of abstract thought and will, but such things are difficult to do, and they want to be careful to not take psychology down a road of pseudo science. If what you are really looking for is for scientists to throw up their hands and say "Everything we cant explain is because of god almighty and the divine human soul hallelujah" then you are not going to get it, because that is not how science operates. What is unknown is unknown until it can be tested. Every dark void is not filled with a beneficent sky father.